FRAUD OF NORTH COLLEGE

Κυριακή, 6 Ιουλίου 2008

The University has recently received a number of enquiries from existing and prospective students regarding its collaboration with North College. This notice endeavours to answer those queries and generally to give an explanation of the current situation.

On 7 November 2007 the University terminated its agreement with North College due to the College breaching the contract. This decision was not taken lightly and was, in fact, preceded by several months of correspondence to try and resolve the matter.

Since then, the University has continued to support continuing registered students on a goodwill basis to ensure that their interests were not prejudiced pending the agreement of a managed exit strategy. Regrettably we have not been able to reach agreement on this issue and, as we are approaching the end of the academic year, we need to make students aware of what will happen now.
Continuing students will still be able to sit their exams. As a special dispensation those who enrolled with the College, but not formally with the University, in September/October 2007 will also be allowed to sit their examinations. Arrangements for these will be communicated to you by staff at North College and by the University in a separate notice.Your results will be communicated to you by the University after the Course Assessment Board has confirmed them.

•If you are in your final year you will be notified of the award you are entitled to.

•If you are a continuing student you will be given a transcript of your results to date. You will not be able to complete your degree validated by the University of Huddersfield at North College.
The University will assist any continuing registered student to find a place elsewhere, either at Huddersfield or somewhere more local. We will write to all affected students with details of available options in due course but we must make you aware that the assistance we can give does not extend to financial help. Your results so far, as evidenced by your transcript, will count for credit at other institutions so you should not have to undertake your studies from the beginning.
We appreciate that this news will come as a shock to students and we are sorry that we have not been able to advise you of this earlier. From the time of termination we have urged North College to inform students what has happened and North College has consistently stated that they did not wish to do so, nor did they wish us to do so. We have acceded to their wishes for as long as possible whilst we tried to discuss and agree exit arrangements. This would have allowed a joint announcement to be made thereby avoiding uncertainty for students. However, as it has not been possible to resolve outstanding issues with North College we are now obliged to make this unilateral announcement.

Once again we express our strongest apologies that you have had to learn of the demise of our collaboration with North College in this way. It is inevitable that students will have further questions as a result of this announcement. In the first instance these should be addressed to Mrs Lesley Barlow, Assistant Registrar at the University, and should be made by e-mail to l.a.barlow@hud.ac.uk. This will enable us to collate all the questions and answer them by way of a FAQ list which we will publish on our website/send to anyone who enquires. This will eliminate the need to send out the same answer many times and will ensure that anyone who has questions has access to as much information as possible.